Complaints and Response Dynamics in Saudi Higher Education: A Pragmatic Analysis of Teachers’ Communicative Strategies

This study examines complaint and response strategies in the institutional discourse of Saudi higher education, focusing on English language instructors as complainants. Addressing a gap in pragmatic research on authentic complaints in hierarchical academic contexts, it draws on Speech Act Theory, Trosborg’s taxonomy of complaint strategies, and Laforest’s complaint-response model. Data comprise 32 naturally occurring complaints and 32 supervisor responses from an English language center at a Saudi university, analyzed through qualitative discourse analysis supported by descriptive statistics. Explicit complaints framed as requests for repair dominated (75%), reflecting indirect, non-confrontational expressions of dissatisfaction. Stronger strategies, such as explicit blame or threats, were rare. Supervisors most often used partial acceptance or procedural justifications (53.12%), followed by full acceptance (25%), then rejections (6.25%), while complete disregard occurred in only 15.62% of cases. Procedural requests were more likely to receive acknowledgement, whereas emotional or accusatory complaints tended to be met with silence or deflection. Findings highlight the influence of institutional power, politeness norms, and administrative gatekeeping on interactional choices. The study contributes to institutional pragmatics in Arab academic settings and suggests practical measures, including professional development in institutional communication and the adoption of transparent, dialogic feedback mechanisms.